on
| "People don't seem to understand that I hate to make difficult
films. I hate to have all these problems. That's the reason I liked making WOYZECK so
much. I shot that film in just eighteen days, and edited the film - an entire feature film - completing the final cut in only four days! That's how films should be made. That was perfect!" |
- Werner Herzog |
Indeed, WOYZECK seems to be a rather untypical Herzog-film on the first glance. No incredible odds, no scandals, no problems with the local authorities. If that is, how films "should be made", Herzog did it not very often. But this time.
WOYZECK was shot directly after finishing NOSFERATU. Herzog used the same crew, the same leading actor, he even stayed quite near to the last NOSFERATU-location in Chechoszlovakia. The entire film/play is set in a small village ("at a deep pond..."). After less than three weeks the film was finished. Herzog did obviously not intend to "stylize" this film, as he did in NOSFERATU, but it seems that he rather wanted to observe, to describe and to explain his object - the character Woyzeck. Herzog tells his powerful story with an immense, sometimes even painful clarity. The director's almost theatre-like filmic technique demands and enables extraordinary acting. While framing the scene in a somewhat documentary style, the director hands his film onto his actors. Herzog wanted Kinski for the title role, because he knew, that nobody else could incarnate the tragic hero, like he would. He than walked behind the camera and filmed Kinski's misery for two weeks.
Reviews of WOYZECK tend to praise the actors and curse the director of that film. It is literally said that directing is missing at all. But in fact, this missing of direction is exactly, what makes WOYZECK so effective. Werner Herzog was wise enough to recognize that.
Eva Mattes received an award for being "Best Actress 1979" at the Cannes Filmfestival. Kinski and Herzog received nothing, but as Kinski pointed out, they did not care about that "scum".
Herzog on...